There is considerable uncertainty about the growth of wind energy generation capacity in Europe over the next 5 years, warns a new report from WindEurope, the European Wind Energy Association, published on Tuesday 8 October.
According to the document, while this energy source will play a key role in the European Union's climate ambition by enabling many Member States to further decarbonise their electricity systems in a cost-effective way, significant growth in wind energy in the coming years can only be achieved under certain conditions.
In concrete terms, even though the association expects European wind capacity to grow by 90 GW over the next 5 years, reaching 277 GW in 2023, it stresses that the actual results obtained will depend strongly on three factors: (1) the level of ambition and clarity of the national energy/climate plans (NECPs) ; (2) whether or not to improve wind park authorisation provisions; (3) whether or not to continue investment in new network capacity.
Thus, if the NECPs are not ambitious and the authorisation problems are not solved, wind energy production in Europe will only increase by 67 GW, 26% less than in the central WindEurope scenario.
On the contrary, in the case of a very positive scenario, the report estimates that wind power production in Europe could increase by 112 GW by 2023, 24% more than in the central scenario.
After the Commission had considered that the draft national energy/climate plans were insufficient in relation to the EU's renewable energy ambition (a gap of 1.6 percentage points compared to the target of 32% renewable energy by 2030), most Member States had agreed at the end of September to update their draft plans (see EUROPE 12334/1). The final versions of these must be submitted to the Commission before the end of the year.
To view the report: https://bit.ly/312zJ7W (Damien Genicot)